Casablanca Chandigarh

A Report on Modernization

Auteur:Tom Avermaete, Maristella Casciato

Uitgever:CCA, PARK Books

ISBN: 978-3-906027-36-4

The book Casablanca Chandigarh. A Report on Modernization is a groundbreaking reassessment of the urbanist experiments Casablanca and Chandigarh.

This richly illustrated book invites us to think afresh about urban life and the modern city by offering images and analyses of two very different but complementary contemporary cities: the planned Indian city of Chandigarh and Casablanca, the North African harbor town developed into a modern metropolis by Michel Ecochard and a team of architects after World War II. Countering the dominant view of modern urbanism that values avant-garde ideas originating in the West, the book offers a more nuanced approach to the history of the modern city and the relationship between local knowledge and imported ideas in the rapid globalization that followed World War II.

By focusing on the design and habitation of the cities’ public spaces and housing, the Casablanca Chandigarh locates the essence of the modern city in its everyday life - which shifts our understanding of architecture and planning, enabling us to see it as the result of negotiation among a variety of actors.

The book Casablanca Chandigarh. A Report on Modernization is a groundbreaking reassessment of the urbanist experiments Casablanca and Chandigarh.

This richly illustrated book invites us to think afresh about urban life and the modern city by offering images and analyses of two very different but complementary contemporary cities: the planned Indian city of Chandigarh and Casablanca, the North African harbor town developed into a modern metropolis by Michel Ecochard and a team of architects after World War II. Countering the dominant view of modern urbanism that values avant-garde ideas originating in the West, the book offers a more nuanced approach to the history of the modern city and the relationship between local knowledge and imported ideas in the rapid globalization that followed World War II.

By focusing on the design and habitation of the cities’ public spaces and housing, the Casablanca Chandigarh locates the essence of the modern city in its everyday life - which shifts our understanding of architecture and planning, enabling us to see it as the result of negotiation among a variety of actors.

Tom Avermaete is professor of architecture at Delft University of Technology with a special research interest in the public realm and the architecture of the city in Western and non-Western contexts. Maristella Casciato, born 1950, is an architect, professor of architectural history at the Faculty of Architecture 'Aldo Rossi' at Cesena, University of Bologna, and Associate Director Research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. She has also carried out extensive research on the architect Pierre Jeanneret and his involvement in the planning and construction of Chandigarh.